In almost any contemporary introduction to Buddhism, one of the first things one learns is the Four Noble Truths:

Everything is suffering (dukkha).

Suffering is caused by craving.

There is an end to suffering.

One can reach this end by following the Buddhist Noble Eightfold Path.

The Four Truths are central to the teaching of the early Pali suttas, so something like them was probably central to the teaching of the historical Buddha. There’s been a recent trend in Buddhist studies to disparage the Four Truths, on the ground that they were far removed from the practice of most Buddhists in history, whose lives (especially but not only in East Asia) focused much more on devotion and magic. But never mind. I’m far less concerned with learning about the historical structure of past Buddhist societies, and more with the question of whether these truths – undeniably revered and treated as truths by many Buddhists throughout history – are indeed true.

But what about the other three? I was provoked to think about this point by comments made to my recent post on karma and theodicy, by Elisa Freschi and by James (no last name given, but his blog is The Supine Bovine). They were noting that we can’t expect to achieve human perfection (nirvana or buddhahood) in this lifetime. I added the caveat that a few traditions (usually tantric ones) believe that we can – but I certainly don’t share their belief, so the caveat is not that important.

But if we can’t achieve the ultimate end in this life, and we don’t get any additional lives to work with, then surely we will never get to that end. And that is to say that the Third Noble Truth is false. There isn’t an end to suffering – unless you count death, which is something of a copout, since it’s an end to joy and everything else as well. Given that I hold the two supporting beliefs – that we can’t achieve an end to suffering in this life, and that there is no rebirth – I am committed to denying the Third Noble Truth, and I thank James and Elisa for making me realize this.

Now, the First Noble Truth without the Third makes for an extraordinarily grim view of the world: everything is suffering, and there’s no way out. In other words, life sucks. Philosophical reflection leads us only to the realization that we must be miserable. But here’s the thing: I reject the First Noble Truth too. My earlier defence of marriage entails as much. There’s a prima facie strangeness to the claim that everything is suffering: one immediately wants to retort, “but what about joy? What about happiness?” The classic Buddhist response is that even happiness reveals itself to be suffering; even sukha is dukkha. Ultimately, the joy of love, like the joy of possession, becomes the pain of loss. But I don’t see this as true. Even if we see a thing’s true nature as being that which it will eventually become, then ultimately, as Lucretius reminds us, happiness ends not in suffering and loss, but in nothing at all – a state that is neutral, not painful. And in the meantime, we can have great joy here on earth; that joy really is joy, especially when it is enhanced by zest.

It seems to me, then, that while the Second Noble Truth basically is a truth, the First and the Third are not. And the Fourth? Well, there seems to be a lot of truth in the Buddhist path as a way of reducing suffering. Neuroscientist Richard Davidson used an fMRI machine to measure areas of the brain associated with happiness, and found that the monk Mathieu Ricard was off the charts compared to his other subjects. Davidson’s followed this up with a lot of other research about the effects of meditation on the brain, though I’d be interested to see research into the effects of other parts of Ricard’s path: Buddhist theoretical philosophy, practising Buddhist ethics, monasticism. But at any rate, it looks like at least parts of the Fourth Noble Truth are right on – when it comes to reducing suffering. The traditional claim is that it ends suffering, and that doesn’t seem to be the case. But to my mind, a major reduction is good enough.

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31 thoughts on “One and a half noble truths?”

Very interesting thoughts, Amod. I have to laugh, thinking of the Buddha as a “mostly-suffering-free” spiritual ideal instead of the traditional “fully awakened one.”

For some of us, this ideal of living mostly suffering free might be enough to motivate enacting the 4th NT, living ethically, meditating, and coming to know the world through wise eyes. But for others, I’d say most people, that will seem a bit dour. Especially so when considering that the 8-fold path takes some work and not following it so easy.

A second comment or question is that I wonder what your thoughts are about the many claims of awakening made either by individuals, such as the Buddha, or by their followers (such as the Buddha! or folks like Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche). Are these delusional claims? How so? Could they be ‘skillful means?’

Wonderful comment, Justin. The point that this isn’t sufficiently motivating deserves a whole post in reply, and I’ll try to do that soon.

On claims of awakening, I’m not sure. I am certainly skeptical whether fully awakened beings exist; I wouldn’t rule out the possibility, but the behaviour of beings who claim full awakening leaves me doubtful. Trungpa is an interesting example here; I do doubt the enlightened status of someone whose doctor said he died from alcohol-induced liver failure, doubly so when he chose someone as his heir (Ösel Tendzin) who was diagnosed as HIV-positive, and gave people AIDS through unprotected sex anyway.

As for gurus with their heads on straighter, like the Buddha himself? If we suppose they weren’t really awakened, that leaves two options: either they knew they weren’t awakened (in which case their claims are skillful means, about which I’ll say more in the follow-up post) or they didn’t know it (in which case they were wrong about something quite important). But I’m not sure the latter case poses a big problem. A while ago I talked about this issue with respect to Gandhi: the man was wrong about a lot, perhaps even crazy, but was still a great teacher we could learn from. I argued that the same could apply to Jesus; so too, I think, to the Buddha.

Welcome, Ted, and thanks for your post! I think there are a number of Buddhists who have made a move very similar to this one. (It sounds like you’re using Lacanian terminology; I don’t pretend to understand Lacan and I’m under the impression that he tends to use words in ways often significantly removed from everyday usage, so let me know if this isn’t what you meant.) The Madhyamaka school (including Śāntideva, who pops up an awful lot in my posts) tended to view pretty much everything that could be put into words as illusory ( = imaginary?) – including suffering itself. It exists only at the “conventional” level of truth, not the higher, “ultimate” level. We are, on this account, liberated from suffering when we recognize that it is unreal.

Me, I have two problems with this Madhyamaka account. First, I’m generally not convinced that the Madhyamaka deconstruction of concepts is itself correct or justified, though I’d need a much longer post to explain why. Second, I’m skeptical of the attempt to escape suffering in this way; for if suffering is illusory, so is joy, and I don’t want to free myself from suffering at the expense of joy (and this is why I’m getting married).

Amod , Thought provoking post. I am curious though, as the first noble truth of dukkha, from how I’ve always seen it, is that it is much more than just suffering. Isn’t it more about the unsatisfactory nature of life, both the ups and the downs, almost a description of Samsara?

And of course the second noble truth is much more than craving, as you pointed out, it is the nature of clinging to a frozen view of an impermanent world, manifested by desire and aversion.

Oh, and I must apologize for my rudeness on my blog, it is kind of the nature of that blog, more of a Zen dualistic thing. Well, anyway, I hope you didn’t take it personal.

Oh, and I don’t mind the rudeness on your blog. I understand that’s part of the point. I generally try to avoid swearing on the blog, and to avoid speaking on this blog in terms like you do in your recent post (which I presume is the one you’re referring to here), because I want the blog to be open and welcoming to readers of a conservative or sensitive bent. But I have no problem with you doing it.

Amod,
I would love to read a much longer post on your Madyamaka disagreement.
I do have a Lacanian “bent”. If I’m not mistaken, the “conventional” truth is the combination of the Symbolic with unification from the Imaginary which can only “circle around the Real, or “Ultimate Truth”. Our speech is nothing but conventional truth, no? As Varasak Varadhammo said that the Buddha taught the Ultimate Truth and it comes in four parts. Just like the three levels, Imaginary/Symbolic/Real, Buddha/Dharma/Sangha?, taking Ulimate Truth apart doesn’t say how the parts work together. This I think would be consistent with the definition of Truth as a Signifier per Parmenides, ref Heidegger, as apposed to Truth as a Signified per Aristotle and Plato. It’s also part of the matrix Of Lacan’s leapfrogging of Saussure and Hegel.

Back on Parmenides, I tend to think of the first Truth as saying, There is a conflict between seeing and looking, which might imply a split self, and this changes the dynamic of the rest of the Truths.
Otherwise the Buddha just tends to sound like another self-help guru from a long time ago.

Well, I think there is a self-help element to the path, and I’ll admit that the way I portray the path here does make it look a lot more like self-help as well – just a really good and useful form of self-help that has the advantage of 2000+ years of practice behind it.

The bigger question here may be the extent to which suffering derives (via craving?) from misperception of reality. My first impulse is to say that in many cases it does, but that there isn’t one single error (such as self or conceptual thought) which is responsible for it.

Ye are perfectly right to be sceptical until it is clear that a particular teacher is enlightened or a perfect master or a bodhisattva or a saint or qutub etc. So what would bring you to that point which is like unto a Jamesian leap? The simplest word for that is grace and if you think that this gift could be an illusion then you have not got it. I believe there’s a US state called the Show Me State, this is its spiritual analogue.

Getting interested in Buddhism because of what it says on the tin is fine but to commit to it requires that something more. Show me Buddha!

“If you think this gift could be an illusion then you have not got it” – well, indeed I don’t claim to have it. But I wonder how one would know when one does. I’ve wondered whether there is any certain knowledge; it seems to me that if one had confidence that one had grace, one could still be mistaken. This is doubly true when one is faced with others who claim enlightenment. I’d probably be more inclined to trust teachers who showed enough humility to claim that they weren’t enlightened. Maybe it’s my Greek sympathies at work, Socrates claiming he was the wisest man in Athens because he knew he knew nothing.

As Kyle indicates, isn’t your interpretation of the 1NT based on a rather literalistic interpretation of the word dukka? Most people I’ve read/listened to take the word in a much wider context – essentially existential bewilderment, if I’ve understood it correctly. As for your marriage, the Buddha says explicitly that there is joy (gratification) in the world, albeit bound up with impermanence, suffering and change, and also that householders or lay followers are equally capable of achieving enlightenment.

The 3NT is problematic, I agree, but only if you accept that dukka means purely suffering in the context that you’re using it. (To talk about the end of suffering makes me uneasy, actually, because it is only in our acceptance of suffering that we can truly understand what it means to be human. Some of the greatest tyrants in history set out to relieve ‘suffering’.) In our Sangha, we interpret the 3NT as a way to understand and transcend the clinging self, and this to me seems more faithful.

A final comment: there is this perception that Buddhism is about suffering and misery, as you say. Actually we should turn this on its head. The Buddha was ultimately concerned with happiness.

Hi Lorem Ipsum, and welcome to the blog! You’re right that I don’t explore the different meanings of dukkha here, and they are important to the question at hand. However, I’m not sure how much of a difference they make, and I do generally tend to think “suffering” is not a bad English rendition for the ranges of the term. I don’t think “existential bewilderment” is an appropriate rendering – it makes it sound like dukkha is something rare or unusual, something that only comes up at points of crisis in our life (or only comes up for philosophers), when according to the First Truth dukkha is supposed to be far more widespread than that.

One (awkward) translation that’s sometimes used to capture a wider range of dukkha‘s uses is “unsatisfactoriness” – nothing is ultimately satisfying. People sometimes do this to make sense of phrases like “even sukha is dukkha” – it’s not that happiness is painful, on this reading, but that it’s ultimately unsatisfactory, it’s not good enough. So that the Third Truth could be read as “satisfaction is possible.” The uses of dukkha in Pali include physical pain as well as grief and loss – the strength of feeling here is not really captured by “unsatisfactory” – but the strength of “unsatisfactory” in the present context would be that it gives us a plausible reading of the Third Noble Truth, that it’s possible to reach a state where we are permanently satisfied with everything. One could imagine this being a worldly state reached in everyday life.

I don’t think that’s the actual meaning in the suttas, though. While the Buddha does occasionally say that householders can be awakened, those references are relatively rare, and they don’t say that householders are equally able. There’s much more emphasis on the idea that awakening in household life is very, very difficult, as you’re weighed down by desires in seeking a partner and attaining material goods to provide for home and family. Awakening is possible, on the traditional account, in spite of the joy one can take in the world. That joy is a snare that keeps you mired in samsara; even that sukha is dukkha. If you could awaken in the midst of household concerns as easily as in the monkhood, there wouldn’t be much of a need for a sangha.

I’m interested in this Jamesian leap (google won’t tell me exactly what it is) if anyone can help explain. Grace is a wonderful topic as well – having been fooled by what I took to be grace once, I’m careful around such ‘feelings’ :)

But my latest thoughts, similar to the “motivation” comment I left before, is that perhaps acceptance of the 4 noble truths, and practicing the path will have greater empirical efficacy in creating a good life than carefully analyzing and accepting only those that jive with you right now. Perhaps, that is, they may not be true, but that they *work* nonetheless.

Grace is a subject well within the scope of the non-rational so verifiability and falsifiability and all the rest of the touchstones of the intellect are not applicable. Here the ‘reasons of the heart’ prevail but there are I think indications when it is real and advice about the marks of the delusory can be got from your teacher or if you lack access to one, in the writings of the saints and sages. You after all worked your way out of such bemusement.

Hi Justin – I’d be interested in your reply to Sunday’s post (Of noble lies and skill in means), which was composed partially with you in mind. I’m concerned there with the issue of lying to others to motivate them; and what you’re suggesting here seems to add an extra wrinkle, of potentially lying to ourselves for motivational purposes.

“However, I’m not sure how much of a difference they make, and I do generally tend to think “suffering” is not a bad English rendition for the ranges of the term. I don’t think “existential bewilderment” is an appropriate rendering – it makes it sound like dukkha is something rare or unusual, something that only comes up at points of crisis in our life (or only comes up for philosophers), when according to the First Truth dukkha is supposed to be far more widespread than that.”

Dukkha stands in opposition to the Sanskrit word sukka, which means satisfactory. But dukkha wasn’t described by the Buddha as unsatisfactory either, but just our human condition of never being fully satisfied, the unending cycle of craving and temporary fulfillment, suffering and pleasure. Suffering is only a small part of dukkha, and if you are going to write a piece on the 4 noble truths, perhaps you should get a little bit better understanding first.

Well, “unsatisfactoriness” is typically suggested as a translation for exactly the reason you identify: that it has to do with our condition of not being satisfied. So that sabbam dukkham can be rendered as “all is unsatisfactory,” as a way of catching those additional connotations beyond “suffering.” That’s what I was talking about in response to Lorem Ipsum. If you don’t like “suffering” or “unsatisfactory,” how would you translate dukkha?

Hi Amod – I’m working on a response to your latest post, but it’s feeling ‘rambly’… Your point here on lying to ourselves or others helps narrow things a bit. Thanks.

Lying itself cannot be helpful in either case. I’m pretty Kantian in that regard. But something like “reasonable acceptance of truths we as yet do not know to be true” does seem justified in terms of motivation or other expedient means. Telling a group of alcoholics “you *can* be free of alcohol” even if you know that, statistically, this is only a half-truth seems acceptable. If challenged, hiding those statistics or lying about them would be wrong though.

For me the 1st & 2nd NTs are convincing. I do cling and crave and see this as the source of my subtler suffering (gross suffering, dukkha-dukkha, even the Buddha still had to deal with) in times of change and it is reasonable to me that, yes, even my moments of joy are ‘tinged’ a bit by knowing they will fade. But practicing the path does ease the clinging/craving and thus the dukkha, so I have reasonable confidence that more practice will do even more. The 3rd NT I have no idea about personally. It sounds good though as a potential extension of the effects I’ve experienced already. And the tradition claims it’s true, so while I won’t beat my fists and demand anyone’s belief in it, I’ll go with it as a reasonable possibility.

Justin, this is a great reply – dude, it actually makes you a lot more Kantian! He always says that the existence of free will, God and the afterlife are things it is impossible to know one way or the other (not just practically speaking, but on principle). But in order to make sense of our own actions, we need to assume the existence of all these three things, as a “regulative ideal.” We couldn’t do that if we knew they didn’t exist; but because we can’t know one way or another, we must assume that they do.

And it seems you’re taking the Third Noble Truth in something very close to that way, as a regulative ideal. (I believe Ronald Green tried to treat karma-rebirth as a regulative ideal in Religious Reason, and possibly his later work too.) We cannot know that there is an end to suffering, but we must assume that there is. This is particularly important in light of the recent discussions here about certain knowledge: how could we ever know for sure whether someone else was fully awakened? How could we even know for sure whether we were? But there’s a lot of appeal to saying “we need to assume it’s possible anyway.” I need to think about this some more…

Wow – thanks, Amod. I didn’t realize I could be even more Kantian! This is great though; I honestly can’t remember ever thinking of the 3rd NT quite like that. This sounds like it should find its way into my thesis…

But when you put it like that… I almost want to say it’s perhaps NOT needed as a regulative ideal in the way Kant needed his 3. If we could boil down karma to psychology or virtue as you mentioned Dale Write did a few years ago, combined with hard empirical data such as the studies done on Matthieu Ricard, then perhaps you’d have all you need…

I think I’ve said to you before that I think the regulative-ideal stuff is a very promising place to bring together Kant and Buddhism. It very likely should find a place in your diss.

Interesting to mention Ricard in this context. Is that heightened left prefrontal cortex activity a sign of awakening? Tricky, because awakening should presumably involve truth as well as happiness, and sometimes we can be a lot happier by deluding ourselves.

I think one essay worth reading for bringing together Kant and Buddhism is Lacan’s, “Kant avec Sade”, found in Finks translation of Lacan’s Ecrits, since the subject of regulative ideals is coming up. Is Kant foreshadowing the ego ideal/ ideal ego split in regards to following the law?

Lacan reads Kant without(lacking)(avec) Sade. Or, maybe, the other side of Sade? One hand clapping in the Zen sense, or Madyamaka.

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